Big News: PM Out Of Touch With God

Well its official, sort of. The
Prime Minister is out of touch with God. The leader of the
nation has been publicly accused by a prominent Anglican
clergyman as being “out of touch with God” and was told to
“spend more time with the Bible looking for guidance from
Jesus”. Ha! The clergyman who made the accusation was told
by the PM he should not presume to interpret God’s will too
narrowly. The clergyman’s response: “ Hey, it was meant to
be an encouragement.”

Now before you decide to question
Helen Clark’s relationship with Jesus, (or lack of one) you
need to know it was Aussie PM John Howard who was the
subject of the accusation. The comments were made by
Anglican Archbishop-elect Peter Jensen just 48 hours after
his election - made as a result of Howard’s constant refusal
to apologise to the Aboriginal “stolen generation”. He
didn’t muck around. Told Howard he should apologise for the
stolen generation and to stop calling asylum seekers
“illegal immigrants”. Said he’d tell him to his face later
on, too.

The whole Jensen, the Howard and God scenario
made the front pages of Aussie papers for a week. Now when
was the last religion made the front pages of an
Australasian newspaper for a week? In NZ- never! Well, maybe
a sex scandal may do it. Mind you, what right has the
Anglican leader telling the PM what to do, politicians ask?
Why can’t he keep Church separate from state?

Well, for a
start Howard is part of the flock. He, too, is an Anglican.
So is Jensen’s brother who stood down from election. Howard
has been one of his parishoners. Secondly, if politicians
don’t want the church to stick their nose into their own
political affairs, they should keep their nose out of church
affairs – like the unsuccessful attempt in stopping the
Uniting Church in opening a heroin injecting room for Kings
Cross addicts.

When Jensen was asked by reporters if
Howard was out of step with the community in refusing to
apologise to the aboriginal people, he replied “ it doesn’t
concern me whether Mr Howard is out of step with the
community, the question is, is he out of step with
God?”

But Jensen may well be out of step with his Primate
Peter Carnley. Like most Anglican leaders Carnley is dead
against against laity administering holy communion. He is
against gay marriage, women bishops, and anything else the
Archbishop of Canterbury says he should be against. Jensen
seems to have the line that any male can administer
communion, so can any woman as long as they’re not a priest.
It doesn’t matter if you’re gay and celibate or straight and
sexual, as long as you’re not a woman you can be a priest.
In fact Sydney, the richest, most conservative, and one of
the biggest dioceses of the Anglican Church almost got
kicked out of the Anglican Communion a while back on the
issue laity administering communion. Gee, if that happened
the priests wouldn’t be able to do it either! Jensen says
the issue is being treated with more seriousness than women
bishops. “There is nothing whatever in the Bible about who
should preside over Holy Communion,” he says.

At least he
appears to be leading the Prime Minister by example in
reading his Bible.

Jensen is not the only Anglican leader
to have been in the news lately. The Archbishop of Brisbane
is to become the next Governor General. The Archbishop of
Adelaide led cricketer Don Bradman’s funeral service, the
Archbishop of Sydney retires, and the Archbishop of Perth
wrote for The Bulletin about Easter. Only Melbourne’s
Archbishop misses out.

Sydney -sin city to some – has
now two new conservative Archbishops. Catholic Archbishop
George Pell transferred from Melbourne to Sydney earlier
this year, and all the gays chanted “go to hell, George
Pell” outside one large Christian rally recently to welcome
him to his position. He’s so conservative he’d have to get
assistance to change a light bulb.

Mind you, at least
Jensen is not smoothing the pillow of a dying church without
the intellectual guts to publicly stand up and speak what he
believes to be the truth in a way which people can respond
favourably to. Which is more than I can say for NZ priests
and church leaders.

God, the Bible and Christ have been on
every front page in Sydney. Meanwhile in New Zealand God,
the Devil and Bob are on afternoon TV, and the BBC’s Son of
God claims Jesus was born in a cave. Well, as long as it was
a “stable” cave. It’s as close to religion as it gets down
here – apart from Samoans in Auckland being locked out of
their church and going to court over it. But that’s
politics, not religion. Seeya.

- Dave Crampton is a
Wellington-based freelance journalist, in addition to
writing for Scoop he is the Australasian correspondent for
newsroom-online.com. He can be contacted at davec@globe.net.nz

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